Sandstone Trail

2013 report

Andy Robinson, event organiser

Up
at 4:45 and at the Community Centre bleary-eyed at 5:30 to unlock it,
and we were off. Poor weather forecast, coaches overbooked, and
lots of last year's marshals and helpers unavailable for one reason or
another, but should I have worried? No, of course not.
Everything seemed to go really well this year. We even had
toilets available to use in Whitchurch, which was one up on last year.

Registration
went OK: a bit of queuing, but not enough to delay boarding the
coaches. A quick "welcome" address to each coach, then off south
to Shropshire. Was it raining? No it wasn't. We
started on time, without leaving anyone behind in Tesco's toilets this
year, and that's the last I saw of any of you until you'd walked or run
33 miles, and staggered in though the door of the hall at the finish.
OK you had a bit of rain, and a bit of hail, and a bit of wind,
but it wasn't too bad at all really. Mind you, I bet one or two
of the people on the checkpoints got a bit cold.

205
started out from Whitchurch, and 187 made it to the finish.
That's 3 more than last year. We had more no-shows this
year though, I imagine because of the poor weather forecast - more fool
them eh? First in was Dave Douglas in 4:51, 20 minutes faster
than his 7th place last year. First lady home was Jessica Lovell
in 5:39, with Steve Nash coming in shortly afterwards in 5:48 to win
the MV50 category. Anne Wade was first lady over 50 for the
second year running in 6:34. Our own Ian Hilditch beat his own
V70 record in a time of 8:50, which was the only record to be broken on
the day. Well done to all of them, but also to all of you who
finished. A long way isn't it? I mustn't forget to mention
Karen Nash's record-breaking FV50 run the week before either, taking
over 40 minutes off the previous record.

We had
two new things going on at the finish. The first was a lot of new
kitchen helpers: First Helsby Scouts. Weren't they good workers?
The second was the sports massage service provided free by Paul
McAvoy of Myokinetics and his colleagues. They worked so hard for
hour after hour, and appeared to eat nothing and drink only water.
Not sure how they did that... Many thanks are due to both
the scouts and to Myokinetics, and both will be back next year, I hope.

Thanks
to all the other helpers too: Delamere Spartans running club, who
manned CP1, Third Frodsham Sea Scouts, who manned CPs 3,4 & 5, The
Cheshire Scouts Event Support Team who kept track of where you all
were, despite Bear Grylls. Cheshire Search and Rescue were great
again too, so thanks to them. This year they didn't have much to deal
with apart from Nick Wishart's head. Nick arrived at the finish
running with blood having tried to headbutt a tree out of the way on
Frodsham Hill and losing the argument. Steve Riley has
subsequently gone to have a quiet word with the tree, and we don't
expect it to cause anyone else trouble - I'll say no more. Oh,
and thanks of course to all my clubmates helping out all over the
place. And my family, who were too.

£122.48
has been donated to Sightsavers International. £30 was from
Claire Shaw and Robert Hornby, who had to pull out of the event but
asked that we donate their refunds to charity - thanks to both of you.
The rest was from donations from spectators at the Community
Centre in exchange for keeping them supplied with tea, cakes etc.

Let us know if there's anything you think was can improve for next year.